One day he was strolling along the street. He was playing some sort of a demon, but he was also Mr. Jubal. Suddenly he heard a voice calling after him, “Peal!” He did not turn round, for no Englishman would do such a thing, and, moreover, his name was no longer Peal.
But the voice called again, “Peal!” and his friend, the commercial traveller, stood before him, looking at him searchingly, and yet with an expression of shy kindliness.
“Dear old Peal, it is you!” he said.
Mr. Jubal felt that a demon was taking possession of him; he opened his mouth so wide that he showed all his teeth, and bellowed a curt “No!”
Then his friend felt quite convinced that it was he and went away. He was an enlightened man, who knew men, the world and himself inside out, and therefore he was neither sorry nor astonished.
But Mr. Jubal thought he was; he heard a voice within him saying, “Before the cock crow thou shalt deny me thrice,” and he did what St. Peter had done, he went away and wept bitterly. That is to say, he wept in imagination, but the demon in his heart laughed.
Henceforth he was always laughing; he laughed at good and evil, sorrow and disgrace, at everything and everybody.
His father and mother knew, from the papers, who Mr. Jubal really was, but they never went to the Opera-house, for they fancied it had something to do with hoops and horses, and they objected to seeing their son in such surroundings.
Mr. Jubal was now the greatest living singer; he had lost a lot of his “I,” but he still had his will.
Then his day came. There was a little ballet-dancer who could bewitch men, and she bewitched Jubal. She bewitched him to such an extent that he asked her whether he might be hers. (He meant, of course, whether she would be his, but the other is a more polite way of expressing it.)